Editor: The Bright Star Catalogue contains 9110 entries of all stars brighter than magnitude 6.5 (the naked eye visible stars). It's one of the most widely used star catalogues and provides detailed basic astronomical and astrophysical data. The Bright Star Catalogue Viewer displays the data of the 5th Revised Ed. (Preliminary Version) (Hoffleit+, 1991, Yale University Observatory) as distributed by the Astronomical Data Center at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. For more information on the Bright Stars Catalogue see: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-Catalog/bsc5p.html.
The Bright Star Catalogue Viewer offers different searching options (e.g. search for common star names, Bayer or Flamsteed designation, HR, HD, SAO number and more)and data sorting.
While the table on the left side shows the results of the current search operation, in the right part detailed information on the currently selected star are displayed. The Notes section provides additional information, organized in 12 categories (C - Colors; D - Double and multiple stars; DYN - Dynamical parallaxes; G - Group membership; M - Miscellaneous; N - Star names; P - Polarization; R - Stellar radii or diameters; RV - radiaL and/or rotational velocities; S - Spectra; SB - Spectroscopic binaries; VAR - Variability).
